Each member of the orchestra would be required to appear in person at the U.S. embassy in London, 185 miles from Manchester, to be interviewed and fingerprinted for the $100 permit.

Ryans told PlaybillArts, "We'd be more than happy to go to the trouble to obtain the permits. We acknowledge the reasons behind the regulations, but at the moment it's prohibitive and it saddens us. It's exciting for Manchester audiences to contrast the HallÇÔÔ_ with visiting orchestras from different cultures playing in different styles. It's a shame that that opportunity will be limited for American audiences."

John Caulfield, the U.S. embassy's consul general in the U.K., told the London Guardian that statistics showed the new rules had not led to fewer performers going to the U.S., adding, "We cannot go [to Manchester] because the equipment is linked into our computers and [goes] back on high-speed lines to Washington to check the biometric data against databases. We are all paying a cost because of terrorism."